In July 2006, David Goggins made his Badwater 135 debut on the road from Death Valley’s Badwater Basin to Whitney Portal. He finished fifth overall in 30:18:54 during a race that reached 123°F and later brought rain, hail and flash flooding. This trace follows the official course checkpoints that shaped his breakthrough performance.
In 1980, twenty-one-year-old Terry Fox set out to run across Canada on an artificial leg, asking Canadians to fund cancer research one dollar at a time. This trace follows selected documented milestones from the Atlantic at St. John’s to the highway outside Thunder Bay, where cancer in his lungs forced him to stop after 143 days and 5,374 kilometres.
From 17 September to 5 November 2006, Dean Karnazes covered a marathon distance in every U.S. state on fifty consecutive days. This compressed trace uses thirteen editorial milestones to make the continental scale legible while naming all fifty states; several weekend runs were live races, while most weekday efforts followed established marathon courses outside their normal event dates.
In 1984, Greek ultrarunner Yiannis Kouros covered the Spartathlon course from Athens to Sparta in 20 hours 25 minutes, improving his own winning time from the race's first edition. This trace follows the defining landmarks of that 245-kilometre crossing and the performance that established Kouros as an ultrarunning legend. His record stood until Fotis Zisimopoulos ran 19:55:09 in 2023.
In 1983, 61-year-old potato farmer Cliff Young won the inaugural 875-kilometre Sydney–Melbourne ultramarathon in 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes. The familiar claim that he never slept is an exaggeration: contemporary recollections say an alarm-clock mistake sent him out early on the first night and that he then slept very little. This trace follows the old Hume Highway towns behind the shuffle, the gap and an Australian sporting folk story.
After her husband Clive died of prostate cancer, Rosie Swale-Pope set out from Tenby on her 57th birthday to run around the Northern Hemisphere. Pulling a small shelter-cart and travelling without a support crew, she covered roughly 32,000 kilometres over almost five years, raising money for a Russian children's charity and awareness of early prostate-cancer diagnosis. This trace uses documented milestones rather than pretending that a journey of this scale was a continuous road route across oceans.
24 July 2006 · Mile 0
Death Valley National Park, California, United States
Goggins started his first Badwater 135 at the salt basin, about 282 feet below sea level. At thirty-one, the Navy SEAL was new to this race but went out with the leaders in the 6 a.m. wave. The first day’s officially reported high reached 123°F. From the lowest point on the course, every later mountain crossing had to be earned on exposed pavement.
36.2302°N · 116.7672°W
Mile 17.5
Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California, United States
Furnace Creek was the first official checkpoint and the first place crews could reliably replace ice, water, food and fuel. The landscape remained below sea level, so the early speed concealed the climbing still ahead. Goggins and fellow 6 a.m. starter Akos Konya pushed the course at what the official report called world-class speed.
36.4561°N · 116.8656°W
Mile 42.2
Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California, United States
Stovepipe Wells ended roughly forty-one flat miles across the valley floor. It served as checkpoint two and the race’s early medical headquarters. Beyond this point the course changed character. The seventeen-mile ascent to Towne Pass gained about 5,000 feet, exposing any pacing error made in the heat below.
36.6069°N · 117.1462°W
Mile 58.7 · 4,956 ft
Towne Pass, Death Valley National Park, California, United States
Towne Pass is the high point of the first mountain crossing, reached after a sustained climb from Stovepipe Wells. The descent on the far side drops about 3,400 feet toward Panamint Valley. Badwater’s difficulty is cumulative rather than singular: hard climbing follows extreme heat, then fast descending loads already damaged legs.
36.3651°N · 117.4400°W
Mile 72.8
Panamint Springs, California, United States
Panamint Springs marked another resupply and the beginning of the western climb out of Panamint Valley. The next eight miles gained roughly 2,000 feet toward Father Crowley. In 2006 the weather later broke into rain and hail, with shallow flash floods crossing the road—an abrupt reversal after the furnace-like opening.
36.3397°N · 117.4676°W
Mile 90.7
California State Route 190 at Darwin Road, California, United States
The Darwin turn-off is the checkpoint where the official course guide says the race usually becomes serious. Services disappear and a mentally flat stretch follows before the descent toward Owens Valley. For Goggins, this was now distance beyond three conventional marathons, with nearly forty-five miles still between him and Whitney Portal.
36.3229°N · 117.5949°W
Mile 108.4
Keeler, California, United States
Keeler sits beside the dry Owens Lake bed with the Sierra Nevada now dominating the western horizon. At mile 108.4, the finish mountain is visible but still separated from the runner by Lone Pine and one final ascent. The official course offers no facilities here. Crew support, managed from moving vehicles and roadside stops, remains essential.
36.4874°N · 117.8726°W
Mile 122.7
Lone Pine, California, United States
Lone Pine was the last full resupply and the turn onto Whitney Portal Road. Only thirteen miles remained, but they contained the longest and steepest sustained finish: about 5,000 feet of climbing. The change in scale is brutal. A runner who has crossed two valleys and multiple passes must still climb from the desert town toward the Sierra trailhead.
36.6063°N · 118.0629°W
25 July 2006 · Mile 135
Whitney Portal, Inyo National Forest, California, United States
Goggins reached Whitney Portal in 30 hours, 18 minutes and 54 seconds, fifth overall in his Badwater debut. The finish sits at 8,360 feet, at the trailhead rather than the summit of Mount Whitney. His 2006 result began a longer Badwater record: he returned to finish third in 2007 and completed the race again in 2013.
36.5881°N · 118.2383°W